I barely made my varsity swim team and I could swim the 100m under 1 minute - which would have put me as the world record holder until 1922. The fastest swimmer at my high school would have held the world record until sometime in the 1970s. I could give the example of the fastest swimmer I ever swam against, but that's Matt Grevers (gold medal in 100 backstroke a few days ago), who would have had the world record back in 2008 with his best 100 free time.

BTW a lot of wikipedia pages for various swimming events have world record progression tables, which are real interesting to see. Also have them for track and field events. Likewise interesting to see.

12349876:kevinatilusa: ...You'd get something that says a lot more about differences in swimsuit technology/training than any sort of actual comparison between swimmers?"

I would like to see how fast they can do 100m in 55 degree open water like the first olympics.

Also worth mentioning related to that Olympics (from the 11 craziest events headline)

The organizers of the Athens Olympics held the swimming events in the open waters of the Bay of Zea on a morning in which the waters dropped to a temperature of 55 degrees and the waves reached as high as 12 feet. The winner was 15-year old Hungarian Alfred Hajos, who had felt compelled to learn to swim after witnessing his father drown in the Danube two years prior. Hajos recounted that he was scared for his life, and his will to live completely overcame any desire to win the race.

Silly Jesus:Nude would solve all this nonsense. The Greeks had it right.

So true. Eliminate all team sports, reduce the Olympics to feats of pure human prowess, none of this badminton/handball/water polo nonsense. I'm torn on short track cycling, since you can't eliminate all "tool" use in things like javelin, pole vault, etc. Everyone competes nude, you can paint things on people's backs for identification.

By far and away the most impressive things I've seen this Olympics this far have been things like the women's 10000M, the swimming, and the gymnastics. (Also torn, feel like that could be significantly pared down.) The events that most directly feature what a *person* is capable of by themselves, not with some counterbalanced, sighted, carbon-fiber/kevlar precision machined "bow".